How I Unhacked a Hacker

Last weekend, my YouTube and gmail account was hacked and made inaccessible to me. It was shocking. On Tuesday, I worked on my gmail account and posted on my book's YouTube page and my personal blog. All three are tied to my gmail account. Tuesday night at 9pm, all three were LOCKED. I was locked out of my accounts. Then the frustration happened trying to get access again (and I can't say I didn't say a lot of bad words during those 5 days) That's today's blog.

(Image; https://welinku.com/)

I have a two-step verification for gmail and hackers are smart. Somehow he got my complicated password, which apparently got hijacked from some site. The phone verifications for gmail (and the other 2 services) were supposed to text a code to your phone, but no code ever came. I did that for days.

Google has NO CUSTOMER SERVICE. Period. They send you to USELESS on-line websites that say "what to do to recover." They tell you NOTHING.

YouTube has NO CUSTOMER SERVICE either. When you're disconnected from Google, who runs YouTube, you're out of luck on YouTube, too.

USELESS TECH SERVICES - Then I paid a tech service for advice. The $55 I paid, was also useless. The "tech expert" said "create a new email and new you tube page, and new blog." - Arrrgh.

I RESEARCHED - I went on google and tried accessing my account and it all came up in Czech language. That clued me in that someone from the Czech republic hacked my email, youtube and blog. Why, I have NO idea. So, it wasn't political. It wasn't an attack on me for who I am. It was just a jerk.

HOW I FIXED IT - I decided to create another Gmail account - a test account. Then it gave me the option to link to other gmails I created. I found my original one, and linked. Then you have to provide a phone # for verification. That's where it worked. I changed the phone number from the Czechoslovakian phone number of the hacker back to mine, and created a highly complicated password.

The next day, I got an email from Google saying, verify by phone. I did. The code came back to my phone. I verified it, and the access opened up.

By, Saturday, I was able to get the gmail accessed, the You tube back, and then on Sunday, my personal blog came back on-line.